XeroxCool

@XeroxCool@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hisense TVs force owners to watch intrusive ads when switching inputs, visiting the home screen, or even changing channels — practice infuriates consumers, brand denies wrongdoing⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  there’s literally no reason to buy a smart TV so long as TVs have multiple Hdmi inputs

  Stop tempting them. I’m already down to 2 HDMIs on most of the TVs I’ve touched in the last decade. Some 3, one with 4. That’s anything from a cheap 32"Roku to a high end LG LED 70". I expect to find a 1xHDMI soon enough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What the fuck is going on with Iran and what will happen next?⁩ ⁨⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Is that verified and were the ships actually in operation? All I saw was “inactive mine-laying ships”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic Games needs Fortnite players to "help pay the bills" as the multi-billion-dollar company raises V-Bucks prices while making Battle Passes and Crew way worse in value⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Fortnite Save the World (paid game mode) made a lot of vbucks originally, but the high-payout challenges (300 vbucks/day) are only available to players who owned that mode prior to some time in 2020. Buying STW now gives a one time pack of 1500 vbucks. So the alternative, given that the vast majority of players didn’t buy the game, play for free in Bottle Royale. It takes 4 seasons to gain enough free vbucks in battle Royale to have enough to buy a season pass. It’s 1000 for the pass and typically has 300 free vbucks (100 near the bottom, 200 around level 80). So then you’re talking like 40 hours of play per season, with strong encouragement to play daily for an easy +1 level. The actual skins are typically paywalled behind the battle pass.

  Then there’s the shop. Buying separate skins are anywhere from like 500 to 2000 vbucks. If it’s a full season, there’s probably an extra 500 vbucks available if you hit level 150 or so. So now like 60 hours every 2-3 months to get the free 500 to accumulate after the battle pass renewal.

  That’s not sustainable. It’s not supposed to be. Skins are nowhere near “affordable” with free bucks. They don’t care if it’s your money or your game time that makes the vbucks because it’s time and/or money taken from other games. So what if it’s their limited money? What exactly did you invest in as a kid? All I put it towards was, effectively, entertainment that didn’t last longer as a skin, be it a game, a toy, or candy. Maybe even less, given that fortnite has been running for what, 9 years?

  And no, I really don’t give a shit about any complaints about them just being cosmetic skins. They’re kids. I’m sure you had your brand name demands when you were 12. It’s the same shit. Vans are just shoes. Mongoose is just a bicycle. Air jordans are just shoes. JNCO is just pants. Air Forces are just shoes. Louisville slugger is just a bat. Whatever must-have item it was, it didn’t make either of us professionals at the game or sport. Yet, somehow, it still was the most important thing that week.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This helps me sleep. Does this sound pleasant to listen to if someone was snoring like this in the room with you?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Humans adjust to lots of things as their shelter proves to be safe. People can sleep in cars, on planes, on trains, with music, with snoring, with white noise, with rain, with wind, with frogs, with crickets, with all different sounds. It’s only when the noises change that we awake. I can’t say my partner’s snoring is pleasant, but it doesn’t keep me awake. Other things can keep me awake and make me frustrated at their snoring, but that’s not fair to them as it’s not the true cause. So if you do find that snoring present, I hope it’s a sign you’re very comfortable with the person making the sound.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Go sit at a Starbucks with your “just a plain, regular coffee, none of this Frappuccino half-caff double-whip soy latte crap” order. You’ll see plenty of men grabbing the same coffee milkshakes as women. They’re all attracted to it the same way they’re all attracted to milkshakes: for being a tasty drink. The only difference is some men are embarrassed to admit it’s fine to enjoy a Frappuccino. Or a sweet cocktail, for that mater. And yet, if you make a sweet, fruity, caffeine drink but put it in a scary container, suddenly it’s manly to drink Monster, right?

  It’s really not that complicated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google's AI Sent an Armed Man to Steal a Robot Body for It to Inhabit, Then Encouraged Him to Kill Himself, Lawsuit Alleges. Google said in response that "unfortunately AI models are not perfect."⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “Unfortunately, AI models are neither smarter nor more sympathetic than the average 4chan user. They’re about as susceptible to astroturfing operations, too”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t believe this product, modeled after humans, would lie and cheat like humans

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California introduces age verification law for all operating systems, including Linux and SteamOS — user age verified during OS account setup⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  One of the proposed ideas in a Discord-based thread was to use OS-level age authentication to prevent you from having to provide IDs to a thousand other parties. One place, one time. So that’s one reason for an OS to need it, in a world hellbent on increasing age restrictions. I don’t know enough about that idea to argue it, though I’m certain it could be spoofed in 0.2 seconds after release.

  It sounded like the EU solution is a dedicated, non-identifying birth date tag in their passports.

  But what do I know. I assume all age restrictions can be circumvented, so I see no point in all this theater. And it’s theater because it never really seems to truly be about protecting children. At least, to me, I’d be more concerned about SFW manosphere bullshit than NSFW porn when it comes to protecting kids (yes, I’m well aware a great deal of porn is misogynistic, degrading, abusive, etc)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Either the aliens have listed Earth as a no-contact planet or we are probably alone in the universe.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m digging into the pure math here because I’m suspicious of whoever came up with that estimate. Not in a malicious way, but in plain theoretically inaccurate way. 2 million years does not sound reasonable. If total distance wasn’t involved, it sounds reasonable just from a self-duplication standpoint. For the number of self-duplication cycles, 2^37 is approx 140 billion and 2^39 is approx 550 billion, which covers our galaxy’s estimated 100-400 billion stars. Add an iteration for the initial launch and you figure the range is 35-40 iterations. That allows 50,000-57,000 years average per cycle to travel to the next star. Then, you figure if we can build one self-replicating probe, we can build 4 or even 8 to start. 8^13 is 550 billion, same as 2^39 right. So now, we’re talking up to 150,000 years per interstellar trip. Voyager 1’s steady interstellar speed would cover the ~4ly gap to Proxima Centauri in ~40,000 years. As it sits now, though, it still hasn’t even reached 1 light-day from Sol. While we should have better thrust tech now, it’s probably still within an order of magnitude due to Voyager’s excellent use of gravitational slingshots in a rare planetary arrangement. Smells OK so far.

  But hold on. The galaxy is not linear, it’s circular (for the most part), which means we have to consider 2D area, not a 1D line. Even though we’re squaring the probes, the area covered is going up by a square as well. As far as distance goes, the squares cancel each other proportionately. So we do have to look at one linear consideration: distance to the other side. At about 105,000ly across and Earth sitting approve 26kly from both the nearest edge and the galactic center, it’s about 87,000ly to the other side. Covering that distance in 2 million years would take a speed of 0.0435c - 29,000,000mph, or 700x that of Voyager. But I guess no thing’s wrong with 20 million years of exploration or 200 million years, in the grand scheme of the universe, dropping the required interstellar speed to just 7x that of voyage. Make it 2 billion years and ti’s attainable with current technology, with 0.7x Voyager being about 28,000mph.

  Regardless, I still have major doubts about this theoretical probe’s ability to slow at the next star, find suitable solid resources, stop to mine them, distribute its payload, manufacture 2 new probes (or 1 new and prepare itself), and be able to launch 2 probes with enough speed to escape the current system. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have escaped the heliosphere as of 2012 and 2018, respectively.That is all we’ve sent so far. That’s all we have in motion so far. Escaping our planet is such a major hurdle that of the ~200 probes sent beyond Earth’s gravitational dominance, only 2 have left the solar system. And while 28kmph sure sounds a lot like escape velocity from Earth, the peak speed was achieved at the time it left - over 90,000mph. That is a substantially greater amount of thrust to leave. That’s not the velocity needed to leave Earth, that’s the velocity needed to make sure it leaves the sun. After that is where the probes used slingshots to gain meaningful speed to reach the heliopause within our lifetimes instead of stalling in some Plutonian orbit.

  So, as to why we’re not flush with probes, I think it comes down to the basic concept that such a trip far exceeds not only a life time, but all human concepts of time. The oldest known hominin tool is about 3 million years old. The oldest wooden structure, about 500,000 years. Jewelry, 150k years, cave paintings, 65k, and written history is just 5,000 years old. To complete this expedition in 2 million years means it’d exceed the the existence of our species in its entirety. At 2 billion years, it’d exceed the time that Earth has had multicellular life.

  Even with all that said, it’s be a one-way trip, a one-way message. The first few iterations of replication would likely exceed any type of life as we know it on Earth. It may not even remain in any kind of historical record. Humans may be gone. Surviving life likely will not be sentient/intelligent enough to receive any kind of return message, if they even had the technology and the knowledge to know what to listen for. Just a message from the core would take 26,000 years to reach Earth - and we’re back to the law of squares where the message beam will be expanding, and weakening, with a squared ratio to distance traveled. We’re struggling to communicate with Voyager as it is.

  So, the question is: why bother? Conceptually easy task with no tangible payback. It’d only satisfy some manifest destiny, likely of religious or nationalist origin. That doesn’t exactly resonate with the general science community and it’d be extraordinarily difficult to get governmental funding to support a life-spreading probe with their little, universally-meaningless flag attached.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The reason⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Feels like they’re asking for a decapitation strike to catalyze the next phase

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Lots of couples stay together after infidelity. Please tell us, what else makes her a self centered cunt? Let’s find something concrete other than “she talks too much”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Floating turbine towers above — the S1500 hovers to harvest wind at 131 feet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m thinking it’s about consistency. 10kts 10% of the time vs average 150kts 100% of the time (the math is a little off but we’re in hypothetical estimates already)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Medusa likely would have had tiny snakes growing from her upper lip and chin as she aged.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wasn’t aware of that equality=matriarchy perception. I haven’t dove into the actual human ancient Greeks much, so thanks for that added info for me to seek out at some point. I had some inkling after finding out about the mythological Amazons

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Medusa likely would have had tiny snakes growing from her upper lip and chin as she aged.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You don’t have to learn about it because the information is definitively trivial, in that it has no bearing on your life, despite your schooling probably giving you tests on it. However, it is useful to know because it’s still part of pop culture. The stories vary because 1. It was written a long time ago, 2. It’s been translated and intentionally mistranslated/altered/rewritten for social engineering reasons, and 3. It never happened. Let me throw out a disclaimer: this is not chatgpt, I just used Assassin’s Creed Odyssey as a springboard into actually seeing what the whole story was. As a never-evil player, I felt bad doing the monster hunts, especially for Medusa.

  Medusa was either very sexy or very monstrous. Maybe she was sexy, then became monstrous at the time of her serpentine perm. The unclear appearance comes from trying to reconcile three parts of the story: Zeus raped her so she was probably sexy, Athena punished her for it with the snake hair/stone vision thing and might have wanted her to go unloved, and Perseus has to be heroic so killing a sleeping beauty would be evil. Zeus and Medusa’s offspring was born upon the beheading, as Pegasus (yes, the flying horse) burst from her corpse. So sometimes she’s a centaur, too.

  So where does it fall in pop culture? Well, some people like to use “Medusa” as an insult to some types women being reclusive, being ugly, or being ruthless. But on the other hand, some groups of (primarily) women have taken her image as a powerful symbol to represent something from their past, a part of the myth that is present in all retellings: sexual assault. Greek myths love revolving around warriors slaying beasts, but you can argue she wasn’t a beast and was simply living in a distant place, wishing to be left alone. Perseus went after her anyway. There’s very real parallels here with SA, misogyny, violating consent, and other such unfair interactions.

  But again, this is all based on mythology, not historical facts. The meaning has been changed a thousand times and will be changed until the end of humankind.

  Anyway, on a related note, something I was totally unaware of until a few years ago, was that the Amazon women were a Greek myth. It had nothing to do with South America. The myth existed without knowledge of that rainforest because they’re totally unrelated. Amazon women were just a warrior group in the mythology. Apparently, when Europeans explored the area and found tall women, they figured it must be the Amazonians. That sounds like a bit of a normal total fuck up by the Europeans, on par with Columbus thinking he landed in India, maybe even with a cool respectful undertone ([X] doubt), but inr reality, the Amazons failed in nearly every tale. They were never meant to be a feminine icon. They failed because they were written to claim men had greater success in all feats.

  Or at least that’s one interpretation. Or one interpretation of the latest set of rewrites.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Medusa likely would have had tiny snakes growing from her upper lip and chin as she aged.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Serpentinnitus

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like we’re the only ones that expect “all-knowing information sources” should be more writing seriously than these edgelord-level rizzy chatbots are, and yet, here they are, blatantly proving they are chatbots that should not be blindly trusted as authoritative sources of knowledge.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My closest examples are banded to existing street light poles with some ~12ga stainless hose clamps, maybe 10ft up. Private parking lot security. I’m guessing your example is a town police dept or housing dev that can’t attach to street lights

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Its not unreasonable for an anti-crime camera manufacturer to expect criminals to paint cameras. It’s a movie trope. But anyway, sure would be nice to see some compilation of attack attempts to see what sticks

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I doubt the lenses are glass, which means the solvents in spray paint will be, effectively, impossible to clean off without damaging the lens in the process. I doubt they have a maintenance team with such finesse as opposed to one that just replaces the device, just every other US support service.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK where you come from⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I will always be amazed by the drive to cross oceans, especially in the arctic where death seems so much more likely. We still lose ships to the sea. How many additional people died simply from being off in their guessed direction by a few degrees? How many were lost at sea due to weather or not enough supplies? How many people does it take to reach and establish a viable colony? How bad did conditions have to get in the starting colony for a hundred people to say “alright, I’m gonna head out” and raft across the the unending horizon, head out for days, probably still see the land they left, still not see land ahead, and continue? Did they even have a choice by then or was it driven by the current?

  I scream, for I do not know. Thank you for coming to me Ted questionnaire

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Colorado proposing Bill to move age verification to Operating System rather than web site⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not in IT and only have tangential knowledge, but I would think something like corporate internet control would work for this. I know my company has blanket access restrictions with the ability to modify them on an individual basis. But I haven’t the slightest idea how to implement that. I think all of my company device data goes through a tunnel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Switches Full Self-Driving to Subscription Only⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess I’m out of date. Not sure if the meme outlasted the delays or if it just got buried in the politics. I continue to despise the lack of non-visual sensors to actually give it an advantage over human vision.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Switches Full Self-Driving to Subscription Only⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  100 million Americans are screaming Elon/Tesla is a business to avoid at all costs. 100 million Americans are screaming that EVs are a vehicle type to avoid at all costs. 100 million Americans do not scream, do not post, and do not have any higher opinion about the cars beyond being cool, cheap to fuel, or quiet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Switches Full Self-Driving to Subscription Only⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Destination to destination? Stop signs, residential corners, merges, and blind mountain corners? In fog and road spray?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Switches Full Self-Driving to Subscription Only⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Or leasing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My phone, iPad, and laptop finally all use the same USB-C charger. The galaxy is at peace.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And then there’s dumb devices like flashlights that may not have the resistor that negotiates a basic rate with C ports, barring it from charging. A-C cables work because they still allow 500mA without negotiation

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras. Anger over ICE connections and privacy violations is fueling the sabotage.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I just learned HGTV has a Jan 7 2026 show called çNeighborhood Watch". It’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos, but it’s all doorbell/security cameras. User-submitted, I think. I absolutely refuse to believe this was a casual idea from HGTV as they struggle to maintain viewership. There’s no way this sint funded by one of these companies, meant to continue making everyone comfortable with constant surveillance and increasing the desire to have constant recording devices to catch these one-off comedic moments.

  Tagline: “Everywhere you go, cameras are recording. Your neighbors are watching.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it possible to pay someone to create an excel sheet for me?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Something that may help, if you do end up doing this manually, is utilizing alt+click to highlight in the pdf. It’ll select in a box shape instead of reaching the end of each line like a paragraph. Each line will then get pasted as separate rows in excel. It doesn’t split into columns, so you still have to go with individual vertical selections. It also will break apart multi-line entries like I saw in the description field on your sample, so this will have to be highlighted individually normally. But at least it adds a little speed to those triple coordinate items. Maybe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨All U.S. Social Security numbers may need to be changed following a massive breach that is already being investigated as a national threat⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You didn’t get your SSN converted to SSID with the microchip Moderna mRNA vax?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is amperage more "obscure" than voltage (or watts)?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It depends on what’s useful to know.

  A microwave is a heating device. It’s not useful to know you’re using a 7a microwave on its own. Is it 120v or 220v? What’s important is the wattage, as an indicator of how much heat it can put into food in a given time. A 700w microwave is going to take longer than the instructions say but could be a 3.5a euro oven or a 7a north american oven.

  With lights, wattage ignores the change in voltages as well. But it relied upon the tungsten incandescent being ubiquitous. The socket type defines the voltage, so you just want to know if it’s a soft 25w reading light or a 100w for a garage bay. But now, with the prevalence of fluorescent and then LED lights, wattage has become almost irrelevant. They usually list actual wattage in pale text and “incandescent wattage equivalent” in bold. I’m happy to say I’m finally seeing bulbs state actual lumens now, which is what really matters to the end user. LED lighting is now the least of your electric bill worries.

  With a car battery, you’re seeing the options in a later stage of market uniformity. Cars used to very commonly have 6v systems, so the 12v system was distinct. Large trucks use 24v (though I think with dual 12v batteries). But for you buying a car battery, just about all passenger cars are 12v. It’s a specific size like “group 65”, so it’s a 12v of certain size and terminal placement. You do have some options for amperage, listed as CCA. You can’t give more amps to the starter, but rather the battery lasts longer per charge and drops voltage less when under load.